They're funny things, international breaks. Having spent the previous couple of months with shed loads of Palace related news rammed down my throat on a daily basis, there is suddenly absolutely nothing being said of any significance whatsoever.
For football addicts such as myself, it initiates a situation where news of Mile Jedinak being given 22 minutes of game time for Australia in their 5-0 win over Malaysia, takes on a level of importance that it really shouldn't command in any sane persons brain, and ultimately, results in the realisation that I really should be spending my time doing more important things, such as curing cancer or learning how to successfully build a garden shed.
With this in mind, there could be a case made for Sam Allardyce suffering from a similar level of mind numbing boredom when he took the foolish decision to verbally bash our fearless leader through the medium of the West Ham official website last week.
From what I can gather from Sam "Percentage Football" Allardyce's comments, he was disappointed that a young manager praised his team for coping well with a big, physically commanding side, and felt that instead of focussing on what we did well, Freedman should have dropped to his knees and bowed at the feet of Sam and his charges from the self-dubbed "academy of football".
Whilst it is stupid to get worked up about the words of a man whose managerial master-plan involves dissecting copious amounts of irrelevant statistics to display how Kevin Davies should be everyone's perfect centre forward. It does irk me somewhat that the completely innocent comments made by our manager have been allowed to be dragged through the press and dressed up as something they're not, simply because Percentage Man is able to use his failed jaunts at Newcastle and Blackburn to warrant media attention.
As with all attacks on our club, the supporters have more than had their say, with Five Year Plan wording a suitably amusing open letter to the man himself which can be found here. As well as an impressive amount of Twitter folk getting pleasantly dug in to West Ham chairman and all-round weirdo David Gold, via his official twitter account.
On further inspection, it appears that Dougie has seamlessly picked up the art of infuriating his managerial counterparts by making innocuous comments in the public eye, a skill perfected some years ago by fellow Scotsman Alex Ferguson, causing such meltdowns as the Kevin Keegan "love it" saga, viewable here.
It is a skill which, although somewhat foreign to us, following periods under the oafish Iain Dowie and wooden Peter Taylor, I feel we should embrace with open arms. It shows that, whilst Dougie now has us playing decent attacking football on a regular basis, he is also able to rattle the cages of footballing dinosaurs such as Big Sam purely through speaking his mind.
There will no doubt have been a part of Allardyce's head that would have written us off prior to the match, assuming that his big budgeted Premier League squad would overpower a club still suffering from a financial hangover with an inexperienced ex-player in charge, only to realise (at some point in the 2nd half I would imagine) that we clearly no longer embody those characteristics.
It is a testament to what Freedman has achieved in only 10 months in charge that we were able to take four points from games and Br*ghton and West Ham in under a week before heading into the imposed two week break that will see us get first team players Clyne, Garvan and Dikgacoi back to full fitness.
Dougie has done his job without any media hype or big money signings, and clearly intends to keep it that way for the foreseeable future, and perhaps that is what has got Sam so highly strung in the first place, because for all of his posturing and deluded self-confidence his team were only able to "dominate" us enough to secure a solitary point. If I were Sam Allardyce, I'd be more "disappointed" that I was unable to get my own house in order before looking to berate somebody for doing their job correctly.
Until next time.
